Page:The painters of Florence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (1915).djvu/126

98 has kept the two subjects apart by throwing a strong light on the enthroned Apostle and keeping the scene of the miracle in shadow, is very characteristic.

In spite of his distinguished friends and growing fame, the painter of the Brancacci Chapel, we are told by Vasari, was ill at ease in Florence, a fact which is hardly surprising if we remember the state of his affairs towards the end of 1427. Whether his creditors became more pressing, or whether he was fired by a sudden wish to see the wonders of the Eternal City, from which his friend Brunellesco had lately returned, he broke off his work abruptly, and left Florence early in the following year. After that we hear no more of him, and all we have is the brief entry under his name, in the register of 1429. "Dicesi morto a Roma"—"He is said to have died in Rome." The statement is confirmed by the income-tax return of his old creditor Niccolò di Lapo, from which we learn that in 1430, the heirs of Tommaso di San Giovanni still owed him sixty-eight florins, but that since the painter died in Rome and left nothing to his brother, the debt is not likely to be recovered. Both Vasari and Landini, who wrote in 1481, say that Masaccio died at the age of twenty-six, and a contemporary, Antonio Manetti, notes down a remark made by the painter's brother, who told him that Masaccio was born on the Feast of St. Thomas 1401, and died when he was about twenty-seven. He had been little known and little honoured in his life, but after his death all men remembered him. Brunellesco wept bitterly for his friend, and lamented the grievous loss which art had suffered in his premature end. "And the most celebrated painters and sculptors," writes Vasari, "became excellent and